Miners in the Philippines, 1942-1945

ANY one of the mining engineers who spent three years under the benevolent and protective custody of the military forces of His Imperial Nipponese Majesty will admit that he has survived a most disagreeable experience, but our friends here in the States all demand that we tell them something about our thrilling adventure. Many of the younger men who were on Luzon in December 1941 joined up with the Army, either as civilian technical employees or through their reserve officer status. They served through the Bataan and Corregidor defense and had five months of thrills and hardship, if that is what constitutes adventure. Unfortunately, too many of them are not alive to tell their stories. But for most of us, our internment as alien civilians was just one long, drawn-out pain in the neck. Yes, we starved; yes, we contracted beriberi, dysentery, typhus, dengue, and for a while had no quinine to fight the ever-present malaria; but these things are not exciting, neither is the account of them interesting. Our contingent from Mindanao, 250 .in number including 25 mining men, went through one period of starvation at Davao. When the activity of the Allied fleet interfered with the importation of staple foodstuffs, and the natives stopped bringing fruit and vegetables into the market, the food situation became acute, and in December 1943, with stocks in sight and in prospect insufficient to provision their own soldiers, our custodians decided that we must be moved to Manila. The story of that ten-day voyage in an antiquated Jap freighter is too disgusting to tell, but hardly more adventurous than the account of a game of solitaire.